After a few minutes, Dr Mayes emerged. He pronounced himself pleased with my mother, and he himself looked a lot better than when he’d arrived. This was probably the result of his correct diagnosis and the improvement in his patient, but I liked to think it was due to the tea, toast and company, too.
‘How long are you able to stay?’ he asked.
I thought quickly. ‘Until tomorrow night, anyway.’
‘That’s good. You’ve managed so well, and you obviously have a calming influence.’ If I blushed he didn’t notice, and went on: ‘Is your father still asleep? Only I may not be back till Monday and I think I should have a word with him before I go.’
‘He’ll want to thank you, too,’ I said. ‘Go on in.’
I had no qualms about letting him in first – in fact I was pretty sure my father would react rather better to being woken by the doctor than by me. I followed Mayes in and drew back the curtains. He touched my father’s shoulder. ‘Mr Streeter?’
There was no response. He put down his bag, and touched the shoulder again, this time giving it a little shake.
I laughed. ‘I’m afraid he’s out for the count.’
Mayes felt with his other hand for my father’s wrist. The smallest movement, like the stirring of a mouse. But it carried with it an implication so dreadful that I turned cold and faint.
He straightened up slowly. Gently, he pulled the disarranged sheet over my father’s shoulder, straightening and smoothing it as he did so. Only then did he look at me.
‘Mrs Griffe,’ he said. ‘I’m so very, very sorry’
Chapter Nine
If I’d thought the night of my mother’s illness was hell, I was wrong. That, I now saw, had been purgatory: horrible, but uncertain – a time of waiting. The day of my father’s death, was hell. Not only had the worst happened, but it was a worst for which none of us were remotely prepared: a thunderbolt. And hard on the heels of shock slithered the crippling realisation that my mother’s life and mine would never be the same.
It was hard to say whether it was worse for her, whose life had scarcely altered in decades, or for me, who had only recently tasted the heady wine of change and from whose lips the cup might now be dashed. I tried, oh how I tried, not to see my parents’ tragedy in terms of my own welfare, but the unwelcome and unworthy thoughts kept butting in, adding guilt to unhappiness.
Thank heavens for Dr Mayes. He may have been young, and new to the job, but his instincts were impeccable. While I broke the news to my mother he went downstairs, out of earshot and filled in the death certificate, describing the cause of death discreetly, not as ‘despair’ or ‘shame’, but simply: ‘heart failure’.
Seeing my mother’s face when I told her of her husband’s death was like watching something die all over again. Disbelief, horror and distress bloomed and were stifled in a second, reabsorbed to be dealt with privately. I held her hand, but it was heavy and inert; what little energy she had was not for me. Too late I understood my father’s earlier sense of helplessness. Only last night, a few hours ago, he had been here. I had snapped at him and ignored him, and seen him as a nuisance – and now he was gone. And at some point while the sun rose on his self-imposed banishment, his heart, worn out with worry and fear, had simply stopped beating. It had failed him, as mine failed me now. I couldn’t, wouldn’t, comprehend the finality of it that his life, and his part in ours, was finished.
My mother and I had both been lost in our own thoughts. Now she retrieved her hand from mine, as though I had had it long enough.
‘Where is he?’
‘Next door. In my bed. He’s very peaceful, Mum.’
‘I should go and see him.’
It was a statement, but a fearful one: there was a question in her voice as well. I sensed and understood her ambivalence.
‘Then do, if you’d like to,’ I said. ‘But for your own sake, Mum – it won’t matter to Dad, he knew how much you cared about him.’
For once it seemed I had said the right thing. Something in her gave a little and her face softened.
‘I think I will,’ she said.
I helped her out of bed, and took her arm for the few painful steps between the room she had shared for so long with my father, and the childish one for which – and in which – he had left her. I glimpsed Dr Mayes down in the hall but he saw what we were about, and withdrew once more into the front room.
‘Don’t go,’ my mother said to me. ‘Don’t leave us.’
I stood in the doorway, but I couldn’t bear to watch, or to listen. I turned away and bowed my head, with my hands over my ears. Worse than the prospect of witnessing any intense emotion was that of witnessing none at all. My mother’s feelings for her husband had been buried so deep and for so long that she might not be able to bring them to the surface even now. And why should she? No one, least of all my mother, could emote to order. But I did not want to see – or for her to think I had seen – what she might consider a failure on her part.
The seconds crawled by.
‘All done.’ She touched my arm. ‘It’s all right, Pammie. He’s all right now.’ She used his name for me, as though with his death it had passed from him to her.
By the time she was back in bed she was breathing heavily, and trembling a little. I made her drink some more water, and asked if she’d like something to eat.
‘Maybe I should,’ she said. I smoothed the bedding and lined up her slippers – anything to avoid looking at her as she struggled with herself, and her guilt about eating when her husband lay dead.
‘Perhaps a honey sandwich.’
‘With the crusts off,’ I promised.
‘Is Doctor still here?’
‘He’s downstairs.’
‘What does he say? About your father?’
I realised that I didn’t know. ‘Would you like to talk to him again?’
‘Not today.’ Her voice had been steady, but now it began to quake: ‘Maybe you could ask him – how long – when will they take him away?’
‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ I said. ‘I’ll find out.’
Dr Mayes had contacted the local undertakers on our behalf.
‘They’re a very sound firm,’ he said. ‘None better to look after your parents.’
It was nice to hear them called that – a couple, together still – and for the first time I thought I might burst into tears. Perhaps noticing this, he continued gently: ‘When they come, Mr McEvoy will speak to you about arrangements. Remember they’re experts, you won’t have many decisions to make. Except – well – budget, obviously.’
‘We’ve got the money for it,’ I said, sounding sharp because I was trying not to cry.
‘Of course. Other than that, be sure to look after yourself, and your mother. If you’d like something to help you sleep . . .’
‘No thank you. We’ll be fine.’
He closed his bag and snapped the clasp. ‘I’m sure you will, but let me know if you change your mind. She’ll want to be up and about soon, but keep her there till tomorrow if you can. I’ll call again.’ He held out his hand and I shook it. ‘Goodbye for now.’
McEvoy and Sons came to collect my father at eleven o’clock that morning. My mother kept her door closed; she had said her goodbyes. They were the soul of professional tact and kindness, but I was still glad that she could not see the shrouded stretcher being manoeuvred down the stairs and nearly coming to grief when next door’s cat ran across the front step, nor the small crowd of neighbours and passers-by assembled in the street to watch it being loaded into the van and borne away.
Mr McEvoy expressed his sympathy only once, and then moved on to practical matters, for which I could not have been more grateful. His manner was gentle, but formal. I arranged with him for the funeral to be on Thursday, at the Wesleyan chapel where Matthew and I had been married. This was subject to the chapel and its incumbent being free that morning, but Mr McEvoy claimed to be privy to the calendars of all the local churches and said that he would
enter it in his own diary, and would wait to hear from me again when I’d spoken to the minister. He then excused himself on the grounds that I’d have a lot to do, and went to accompany my father for his final sprucing-up.
The van pulled away, and I closed the door. As I stood in the narrow hallway, bereft and paralysed, I could no longer avoid hearing the only sound in that otherwise silent house: the terrible sound of my mother weeping.
I may well, as Mr McEvoy said, have had a lot to do, but I didn’t want to do any of it. What I wanted was to flee. It took a full two minutes, and all my resolve and self-control not to go out into the street and walk away, as fast and as far as I could. If it hadn’t been for my mother, I probably would have done. But her sobs – so deep, wrenching, and elemental, in a voice so unlike hers – acted like the links of a chain that held me fast. In the end I pulled myself together, and opened a few windows. I should probably have kept them shut and drawn the curtains, but it was good to let in some of the normal, sunny, un-grief-stricken air.
By the time I went up to her she had stopped sobbing and we neither of us mentioned it. She had finished her glass of water and I filled it up for her. Soon after that she needed to pass water, which she did with a little discomfort, but only the most residual, rusty trace of blood. She washed her face and hands unaided, and then got back into bed while I helped her with her hair. We unplaited and brushed it, and she wanted to coil it up in her usual daytime style, but she was tired and I couldn’t manage that to her satisfaction, so she had to be content, for now, with a tidier braid. While all this was going on, I told her about my provisional arrangements for the funeral.
‘You have been busy,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry, Mum, I hope that’s all right. I didn’t think you’d want to wait too long.’
‘No, no. No time like the present.’
‘Mum—’
‘There are things we need to decide. Hymns and whatnot. Not that your father ever went to church. The last time was your Wedding.’ Realising what she had just said she glanced at me and I saw again, for an instant, the turmoil below the surface.
‘Oh Pammie,’ she said. ‘We’re both widows now.’
A little later she took a nap and I walked up to the chapel. The minister’s wife, distracted but affable, answered the door of the manse in an apron and heard the news of my father’s death with businesslike sympathy: Gerald Streeter was a stranger, and it was all in a day’s work for her. Her husband was out, but she checked his diary and pronounced Thursday clear and us booked in.
‘Can he call on you later?’ she asked.
‘Yes – or tomorrow would do.’
‘Not for him,’ she pointed out briskly. ‘It’s his busy day.’
On the way back I did some shopping. I was nervous about cooking for my mother, and selected very simple fare: a couple of chops, some mince, vegetables and the makings of macaroni cheese. I also stocked up on various dry goods. I supposed, with dread, that I should have to lay on some kind of funeral tea on Thursday. How many would attend? That again was up to me; my parents had not had a wide circle of friends, and very few relations, but I would have to let the neighbours know, and Dad’s former colleagues at the Speedwell works.
The last time I’d concerned myself with provisioning an event had been the lunch party at Crompton Terrace. Another world, but one, I reminded myself, that had a claim on me. With all that had happened it was hard to believe that only yesterday I had put in a day’s work there with no inkling of what was to come.
When I got back, to my consternation, but not entirely to my surprise I found my mother out of bed, pale and perspiring, attempting to get dressed. Nothing would deflect her from her intention to come downstairs, so I rallied round and half an hour later she was parked in a chair by the net-curtained window in the front room. I couldn’t deny that it was consoling to have her there, a sign of normality. But of course things were not normal – everything we said or did, every move we made and mouthful we ate, reminded us of that. God knows why, but neither of us would cry in front of the other, so the quiet room throbbed and grew heavy with our unshed tears. Once or twice I went into the backyard and wept and wept, and when I got back it was plain she’d been doing the same, but still we soldiered on with our pigheaded, unnatural charade. It was too soon to talk about Dad – to remember this and that, to look at photographs or revive old times. We didn’t know what to do, or how to behave, so we simply trudged along, eyes down, both of us trying not to think of the weeks, months, years ahead and what they meant.
A little note dropped through the letter box, the first of many to arrive over the next few days. The messages, so kindly meant, were mostly rather stilted: ‘Your great loss’ . . . ‘condolences from Wilf and me’ . . . ‘blessings at this difficult time’ . . . ‘please accept our sympathetic thoughts’ . . . Still, my mother seemed scarcely able to believe people’s kindness, and read the notes over and over, taking them as a sign of her husband’s excellent character, and the esteem in which he was held.
‘You see?’ she murmured, holding up the single page like evidence. ‘You see?’
About four o’clock she became tired and dozed off. One of the neighbours, Mrs Coleman (she of the stillbirth all those years ago) knocked on the door, and I took the opportunity to explain, in a lowered voice, that my mother hadn’t been well herself, and wouldn’t be up to seeing anyone till Monday at the earliest. I also told her the date and time of the funeral, knowing that – good, gossipy soul that she was – the information would be speedily disseminated up and down the street. She asked if there was anything she could do and I took the opportunity to mention that a cake for Thursday’s tea would be gratefully received. I was pretty sure this hint would result in at least half a dozen cakes, but what did it matter? The local ladies wanted to help and my own baking, learned at my mother’s side in the months after Matthew’s death, was rusty with disuse.
When she’d gone I shook my mother’s shoulder gently, and told her I was going up to the phone box.
There were dozens of people I had to get in touch with, but they would have to wait till tomorrow. I couldn’t help it – I called the Jarvises. The phone rang for some considerable time.
‘Hello?’ She sounded slightly breathless.
‘Mrs Jarvis? It’s Pamela. I’m so sorry to bother you at a weekend.’
‘Pamela! Not at all . . . I was upstairs.’ I could imagine – one of her afternoon rests.
‘It was only to say – I ought to tell you—’ Infuriatingly, my voice broke.
‘Hello? Pamela? Hello?’
I cleared my throat. ‘I’m here.’
‘What is it? You sound rather blue . . .’
I knew I had to speak quickly, firmly and to the point if I wasn’t to dissolve. ‘Mrs Jarvis, my father died last night. I must stay down here with my mother till after the funeral, so I shan’t be in until next week.’
‘Oh my dear . . .’ I could picture her face, contorted with concern for me. ‘I’m so terribly sorry. What – I mean was he . . .?’
I rescued her. Usefully the balance of our relationship dictated that I was the incisive one.
‘It was very sudden, and very peaceful. He died in his sleep.’
‘But such a shock . . . For you, and for your poor, poor mother.’
‘Yes. She’s not been very well herself, so you can imagine. I must stay here for a while.’
‘Of course you must. Don’t even think of coming back until you’ve done all you can for her. Christopher and I both understand perfectly, at least he will when I tell him, I know.’
‘I’m sure Monday week will be fine. She has good neighbours. But if anything should happen to make it later than that, I’ll let you know.’
‘Thank you, but don’t worry about us, we shall miss you of course, my dear, but we’ll just have to muddle along as we used to do. Could we – could you let me have your address and telephone number so we can be in touch? I feel sure Christopher . .
. we both would . . .’
I explained that we didn’t have a telephone (promising myself to rectify that soon) and gave her the address. As I was about to ring off, she said: ‘Oh, Pamela – this may not be quite the time, but compliments are always so nice I think I’ll tell you – you made such a hit the other day. John Ashe in particular was terribly taken with you. But anyway, I only mention that as the tiniest thing when you’re going through so much. We shall all be thinking of you . . . Goodbye, my dear . . . goodbye.’
When I’d replaced the receiver I remained standing there in a kind of trance. Hearing Amanda Jarvis’s voice had brought that world rushing back, and its sights, smells and sounds enveloped me. At this time in the afternoon Chef would just have arrived and he and Dorothy would be gossiping in the kitchen . . . Amanda, her rest interrupted, would have gone to the office to tell her husband my sad news . . . he would be sitting between the desk and the window, the ankle of one long leg resting on the knee of the other . . . Edward Rintoul would be lying on the grass with his hat over his eyes . . . And upstairs in the breathless heat of the attic, Suzannah would be steadily covering her wall with all those faces collected in her head.
The swallows would surely have gone. But the shy, secret nightingale – perhaps she’d still be there.
I closed my eyes and prayed: for my father’s soul, my mother’s healing and my own future. I was overwhelmed by a sense of the distance separating my parents’ house and the Jarvises’ high on its hill in Highgate – a distance far greater and more unbridgeable than the miles and miles of London that lay between. But something that Amanda Jarvis said had spun a single spider thread across the void. The mention of John Ashe’s name touched some deep, dark spot in my mind, far beneath my sadness and confusion; and the knowledge of his approval was like the most seductive whisper.
‘Excuse me!’ There was a sharp rap on the glass, and a woman’s cross face outside. ‘Are you finished?’
I returned to the house where my mother was still sleeping, her head nodded forward and her hands lying on top of the note in her lap.
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